1997, China
My mom’s mom often made winter clothes and small blankets for me, and also knitted a one-piece sweater for my little yellow bear; my mom’s dad often leaned over the desk in his study reading newspapers, doing sudoku, sometimes teaching me calligraphy on old newspapers or making book covers for books; mom works in archival and information management at a hospital, and when she makes phone calls, she often writes some things repeatedly on paper. As for my father, although he was not often present, he did offer something different from the others: an inherited impulse toward walking, running—the use of the body. In fact, for various reasons, neither my family nor I ever expected that I would eventually select art. Yet, looking back at the fragments of everyday life, it seems that creative practice had already quietly entered my daily life in different forms.
My practice begins with personal and familial experience and takes Michel de Certeau’s The Practice of Everyday Life as a reference. I focus on issues, materials, and media that are often overlooked in everyday life. Aware that excessive freedom can produce dizziness, I deliberately limit my actions to specific sites and time, focusing on the presence(now) and situatedness(here) while continuously exploring the interactions between the body, materials, and environment.
While when and where are certainly important, what matters more to me is how limitation can be understood as the rules of a game rather than as a form of lack, and what and how I can do it—within such constraints. For example, in my series work Nomadic Play, I treat frequent experiences of relocation as a form of nomadic adventure game. Here and now, I practice surrendering to the the unpredictable things and the possibilities of failure, also as an exercise in the Stoic dichotomy of control.
At the same time, I try to feel and explore the ambiguities and fluidities between seemingly opposing states and sensations: the everyday and the non-everyday, stability and instability, freedom and constraint, excess and scarcity, completion and failure.
My practice begins with personal and familial experience and takes Michel de Certeau’s The Practice of Everyday Life as a reference. I focus on issues, materials, and media that are often overlooked in everyday life. Aware that excessive freedom can produce dizziness, I deliberately limit my actions to specific sites and time, focusing on the presence(now) and situatedness(here) while continuously exploring the interactions between the body, materials, and environment.
While when and where are certainly important, what matters more to me is how limitation can be understood as the rules of a game rather than as a form of lack, and what and how I can do it—within such constraints. For example, in my series work Nomadic Play, I treat frequent experiences of relocation as a form of nomadic adventure game. Here and now, I practice surrendering to the the unpredictable things and the possibilities of failure, also as an exercise in the Stoic dichotomy of control.
At the same time, I try to feel and explore the ambiguities and fluidities between seemingly opposing states and sensations: the everyday and the non-everyday, stability and instability, freedom and constraint, excess and scarcity, completion and failure.
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Text:
Poem
Typography
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Textile:
Fiber
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Texture:
Fiber
Image
Poem
Sound
Archive
- Interested in:
Everyday Life
Space and Place
Archive
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Also interested in:
Field Recording
Group Exhibition
2025
- Eathing Workshop(Seoul, Korea)
- Dreamcore Zone(Tian Xi House, Shaoxing, Zhejiang, China)/Poster Design
- Interstitial Living(inBetween, Hohhot, Inner Mongolia, China)
- Found and Discovered International Group Exhibition(Loosen Art, Millepiani Rome)
- Scenes from Real LifeInternational Group Exhibition(Loosen Art, Millepiani Rome)
Others
2024
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Ki Hyongdo Literary Museum Poetry Contest 'One Blue Night' – Gold Prize(Korea)
1. My real name is ‘刘宸（Liu Chen）’ but I took my mother's family name '时(Shi)', which isn't very common. Also in Chinese, it means 'time'."
made by my mom’s mom